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Pilot error not to blame for Madrid air crash, say investigators

The preliminary report by investigators into the Madrid air crash appears to absolve the pilots of any blame for the accident which killed 154 people. The crash on August 20 is blamed on a fault which prevented the wing flaps from opening on the Spanair MD-82.

Initial findings by the Civil Aviation authority show the pilots followed recommended protocol in the moments leading up to the crash of flight JK5022, which was bound for Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

Evidence from the black box data recorder indicated that the pilots made the appropriate checks on take-off but that an alert system in the cockpit failed to warn them that the wing flaps had not deployed correctly.

Two other alarms, warning of nearby ground and imminent stall, did work as the pilots struggled to gain control when the plane left the runway at Barajas airport.

Qantas probe focuses on flight control system 'irregularity'

Investigators are focusing on a potential irregularity in the flight control system of a Qantas Airways Airbus A330-300 that experienced a sudden nose pitch down mid-flight resulting in around 74 people on board being injured on October 7.

The pilots received centralised aircraft monitoring messages to say there was "some irregularity with the aircraft's elevator control system", the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB)) says in a statement today.

This statement is referring to an accident yesterday afternoon while the aircraft was at 37,000ft (11,280m) en route from Singapore to Perth.

The aircraft "climbed approximately 300ft...during which time the crew had initiated non-normal check-list and response actions", says the ATSB.

Then the aircraft "abruptly pitched nose-down, [and] during this sudden and significant nose-down pitch, a number of passengers, cabin crew and loose objects were thrown about the aircraft cabin, primarily in the rear of the aircraft".

This resulted in "a range of injuries to some cabin crew and passengers" including broken bones.

ATSB says the pilots first made a 'pan pan' emergency broadcast to air traffic control but a few minutes later called 'mayday' and requested clearance to land at Learmonth rather than continuing to Perth.

"The aircraft landed at about 15:30 local time, about 40min after the start of the event."

ATSB says the event has been classified as an aircraft accident because of the nature of the injuries.

It says of the 303 passengers and 10 crew on board, 14 people had serious - but not life threatening - injuries.

An additional group of up to 30 had serious enough injuries to receive medical treatment in hospital and up to a further 30 required first aid treatment, it adds.

ATSB says it currently has seven investigators examining or about to examine the aircraft plus Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority, France's Bureau Enquetes-Accidents and Airbus are involved in the investigation.

It says it plans to issue a preliminary factual report within 30 days.

Qantas says in a separate statement that the severely injured people on board the aircraft were airlifted from Learmonth to Perth by Australia's Royal Flying Doctor Service. Other passengers were flown to Perth on Skywest Airlines, it adds.

Learmonth is an airport and airbase south of Exmouth, a remote town near Western Australia's northwest coast.

Qantas' A330-300 remains in Learmonth because the ATSB is inspecting it, says the airline.

The airline's CEO, Geoff Dixon, says the carrier is assisting with the investigation and the aircraft's flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders have been removed and will undergo assessment.

According to Flight's ACAS Daily Alert the A330-300 involved has local registration VH-QPA.

Source: Air Transport Intelligence news

FAA faulted for laxness on maintenance outsourcing

WASHINGTON - Nine U.S. airlines outsourced more than 70 percent of their major aircraft maintenance last year, and federal aviation officials' oversight of repair facilities is lagging, according to a government report.

One-fourth of the outsourced maintenance is being handled by contractors overseas.

The Transportation Department's inspector general said the outsourcing, which has more than doubled in four years, was of concern because the Federal Aviation Administration has failed to closely track how much maintenance is farmed out and where it is performed.

Although the FAA has taken steps to improve, "the agency still faces challenges in determining where the most critical maintenance occurs and ensuring sufficient oversight," investigators said in the report issued this week.

In their effort to lower costs, the report said, airlines continue to shift their heavy airframe maintenance from their own in-house mechanics and engineers to hundreds of repair companies in the United States, Canada, Mexico and countries in Central America and Asia.

Nine major airlines examined by the inspector general outsourced 71 percent of their heavy air frame maintenance — repairs and servicing to an aircraft's body, wings and tail — in 2007, up from 34 percent in 2003. More than a quarter of that maintenance — 27 percent — was performed at foreign repair facilities.

The airlines examined in the report were AirTran Airways, Alaska Airlines, America West Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines. American Airlines, the nation's largest domestic carrier, was not included, the inspector general said, because it handles most maintenance in-house.

The FAA relies heavily on the airlines — and the repair facilities themselves — to make sure outsourced repairs meet the air safety standards and requirements of the individual airlines.

FAA requires each repair station to undergo a government inspection at least once a year, FAA spokesman Les Dorr said. The report says those inspections often are not being conducted by agency inspectors most familiar with standards and requirements of the airline whose planes are being repaired.

As much as five years lapsed between visits to some major maintenance facilities by inspectors assigned to individual airlines. Inspectors not assigned to a specific airline may not be familiar with the special maintenance requirements of that airline's planes, which are often customized.

The report cited a foreign facility, which repairs engines for an unidentified airline, that had not been inspected by an FAA inspector assigned to that airline in five years, a period in which the facility had repaired 39 of the air carrier's engines.

The report recommends FAA require airlines to provide more complete information on the extent and location of outsourced repairs, ensure air carriers and repair stations are better able to spot and correct problems, and improve the documentation of inspection results.

The FAA agreed it needs to do more. "We actually concur with all the inspector general's recommendations," Dorr said. "We have procedures in place that already address some of the recommendations, and we have some projects in progress that address others."

One safety expert, however, said the report underscores that FAA still has a long way to go toward resolving the outsourcing issue, which has been source of controversy for the agency for several years.

"What this report tells me is there is still a big problem with oversight — the FAA is not verifying that the oversight being provided by the air carriers is doing the job it's supposed to," said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

FMI: Click Here

Wing flaps and alarm failed on Madrid crash jet

Wing flaps failed on the Spanair flight that crashed last month and an alarm that is supposed to warn pilots of the problem never sounded, according to a preliminary report yesterday on the accident that killed 154 people.

The investigators did not say whether they believed the flap fault caused the 20 August crash in Madrid that killed all but 18 people on the MD-82.

Investigators said they needed to further study a faulty air temperature gauge outside the cockpit, a problem that forced the pilot to abandon a first attempt to take off.

Spanair has described it as a minor glitch that was resolved by turning off the gauge. The plane crashed an hour later on its second attempt to take off.

However, the report said the faulty gauge might be linked to the failure of the cockpit alarm horn, which is supposed to sound when a departing plane is not properly configured to get off the ground.

The findings were drawn from the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.

FMI: The Scotsman

PAMA/SAE Institute Calls for Subject Matter Experts: Composites, Rotorcraft, Avionics

Everything is looking up in the world of PAMA/SAE Certifications these days. Our first certification, the AMS/AME, has over 125 Honored Colleagues in its ranks and we have been working very hard to establish a significant customer that will tip the scales for a number of organizations evaluating our program. Look for a major announcement within the next month or so. Please visit us online for information on the PAMA/SAE Institute Aviation Maintenance and Production Certification Program.

In the meantime, we have been consumed with filling out our portfolio of certifications in concert with the Professional Certification plan we laid out some two years ago. We have completed the program design for a three-tier Composite/Bonded Structures Technician program in concert with the members of the SAE Commercial Aircraft Composite Repair Committee (CACRC). Sometime this fall we hope to begin formalizing that program with a Job Task Analysis and Test Blueprints. To execute those projects, we need Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to volunteer their time.

If you are interested in participating as a Composites SME, please send your resume to Laura Blanchard, our Certification Coordinator . We'll be distributing more info on this opportunity shortly.

Also, we just announced last Friday the formation of a joint Military/Industry Master Rotorcraft Technician Stakeholders gathering during the last week of October. At this senior stakeholders meeting we will be determing the depth and breadth of the industry's desire for such credentialing - or if it even exists on a broad scale. Our sense is that it does as the Army wants raise the bar for its civil servants and to provide its rotorcraft technicians with transportable credentials when they separate from the service - something most other separating servicemembers have when they enter the civilian workforce. Industry has indicated a passion for growing their rotorcraft technican workforce and we believe our blueprint for a series of increasingly skilled certifications is the ticket to a long term plan. Even though we are not as far along as we are with Composites, we are starting to solicit Rotorcraft SME's also.

If you are interested in participating as a Rotorcraft SME, please send your resume to Laura Blanchard, our Certification Coordinator. We'll also be distributing more info on this opportunity shortly, too.

FAA Told to Audit Airline Safety Data for Accuracy

By Sholnn Freeman
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Federal Aviation Administration should audit information it receives from airlines on safety and maintenance issues to ensure its accuracy, a panel of aviation safety experts said yesterday.

Transportation Secretary Mary Peters asked an outside panel earlier this year to review FAA safety policies in the wake of blistering criticism from Congress and the Transportation Department's inspector general that the FAA had grown too cozy with air carriers. The FAA relies heavily on self-reported data from airlines to spot trends that could lead to mechanical failures or plane crashes.

The criticism stemmed from safety lapses in the past two years by American Airlines and Southwest Airlines. The government fined Southwest $10.2 million for flying 46 Boeing 747s that had not been checked for fuselage cracks.

Panel members said they supported the FAA's strategy of working closely with airlines on maintenance and safety issues, citing the approach as integral to the nation's aviation safety system.

Panel member William O. McCabe, a former aviation executive at DuPont, said the FAA had to focus on "leading indicators" by sifting through data. He called the system "looking for ugly."

When a Tragedy Becomes a Crime: Prosecutors Probe Air Disasters

By DANIEL MICHAELS
Wall Street Journal
As investigators search for clues to the crash of Spanair SA Flight 5022 in Madrid last month, families of the 153 victims demand to know who is to blame. Another critical question: whether that will be determined in civil or criminal court.

For six decades, aviation regulators have sought the causes behind and responsibility for plane accidents. Victims' families have sued for damages with civil suits.

Lately, however, public prosecutors are seeking criminal accountability for mistakes that lead to air disasters, raising a thorny legal and moral question: When does human error become a crime?

"It's a Nobel Prize question, figuring out how to coordinate civil and criminal law enforcement," says Harvard Law School professor David Rosenberg.

While it isn't yet clear whether the Spanair crash will prompt criminal charges, several air accidents in Europe this decade have. One of the latest cases stems from the Air France Concorde crash in 2000 that killed 113 people. (That was before the carrier became Air France-KLM SA.) French prosecutors have charged five people and Continental Airlines Inc. with voluntary manslaughter. Among the defendants are three engineers who designed and certified the supersonic plane more than 30 years earlier. Continental and two of its employees are included because a piece of metal that crash investigators believe dropped from one of its planes is suspected of initiating the crash. All the defendants deny the charges.

National justice systems draw the line between civil and criminal cases differently. The U.S. has a range of civil penalties -- such as fines and punitive damages against individuals and companies -- that don't exist in many European legal codes, says Anthony Sebok, a professor at New York's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

In general, countries try to set a high bar for pressing criminal charges. The U.S. usually demands evidence of reckless behavior or gross negligence. In the wake of a 2003 Staten Island ferry crash that killed 11 people, for example, federal prosecutors won prison sentences for the captain, who had passed out on painkillers, and his boss, for failing to enforce rules requiring two pilots in the wheelhouse.

FAA moves to improve safety oversight

By Mary Mosquera
FCW.COM
The Federal Aviation Administration said it has made progress in systems and processes that would improve safety oversight after gaps in compliance were revealed in April. Robert Sturgell, FAA acting administrator, reported on efforts to fix the problems in a release dated Sept. 5.

The Transportation Department’s inspector general said in April that the FAA had developed too close a relationship with Southwest Airlines, which led to a breakdown in safety oversight.

The FAA has depended on airlines to report problems under a program that encourages voluntary reporting of airworthiness problems. The closeness of the relationship produced weaknesses in FAA’s national program for risk-based oversight, said Calvin Scovel III, Transportation’s inspector general.

Southwest continued to fly aircraft that had not been safety-inspected and which later were found to have fuselage cracks, according to the IG’s findings. When the airline notified FAA’s principal maintenance inspector, he did not ground the affected planes. Later, Southwest formally admitted the safety violation through a voluntary self-disclosure program and was fined, Scovel said.

The IG also said the FAA failed to protect from retaliation the employees who reported safety issues and to ensure that the airlines completed corrective actions.

FAA to Get High Marks in Report - Safety Review Gives A Boost to Agency With Many Critics

By CHRISTOPHER CONKEY and ANDY PASZTOR
Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON -- An independent review team is expected to laud the Federal Aviation Administration's approach to ensuring airline safety, a big boost for an agency criticized after a string of oversight lapses.

But the FAA still confronts several challenges, including how to get airlines to fully comply with its safety directives. The agency said Friday that it is investigating 17 new cases of noncompliance among 11 U.S. carriers. Overall, the agency is investigating about 24 instances of maintenance slipups stemming from about 5,600 reviews of safety compliance this year.

In the most controversial case, Southwest Airlines Co. is contesting a $10.2 million penalty levied by the FAA after the airline operated flights using jets that were overdue for safety inspections. Multiple instances of noncompliance by AMR Corp.'s American Airlines also are under investigation, including wiring slipups that led to thousands of flight cancellations in April. The agency may propose a significantly larger penalty against American than the one pending against Southwest, according to people familiar with the matter.

An American spokesman said "nobody has told us of the proposed dollar amount" for a possible fine. "It's very speculative at this point," he said.

The report from the independent board of safety experts appointed by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters is due Wednesday. It is expected to give the FAA high marks for its safety-enforcement efforts, and generally support the trend toward more voluntary compliance and working in partnership with airlines, according to people familiar with the details. There will be some recommendations to change existing programs, but the thrust of the findings will largely vindicate the agency's approach, management and independence, according to these people.

FAA: US Airlines Comply With ADs 98 Percent Of Time

And They're Working On That Other Two Percent
The results are in following an FAA audit of US airline compliance with Airworthiness Directives, announced in April... and the agency says the results are encouraging.

Acting Administrator Robert Sturgell said Friday FAA inspectors found an overall compliance rate of 98 percent in more than 5,600 audits of Airworthiness Directives (ADs) at US air carriers. In the remaining two percent of the audits, the carriers resolved the issues of noncompliance before the airplanes flew again.

"This audit gives us confidence that, overall, the system is safe and in almost every instance the airlines are complying with our safety directives," Sturgell said.

As ANN reported, the agency's reinvigorated pursuit of airline safety came after two inspectors blew the whistle on the too-friendly relationship between FAA officials tasked to oversee maintenance compliance at Southwest Airlines, and that carrier's management. Minnesota Congressman James Oberstar, who has spearheaded Congressional hearings on the matter, termed that relationship "a culture of coziness," which resulted in FAA inspectors allowing Southwest to skirt mandatory fuselage fatigue inspections on its older Boeing 737 models.